Copyright 2007 Isotope28

Purpose

Steps

Heuristics

Artifacts

   The participant responsibility-collaboration (RC) cards capture the sum of all the behaviors for each participant in the problem analysis in one place. The participant RC card identifies everything a participant must do from a behavior perspective, as well as detailing the knowledge the participant must maintain. The participant RC card also illustrates any required collaborations with other participants for each item of knowledge or behavior. The participant RC cards are the equivalent of a data dictionary for the problem domain. and provide the primary interface to the next phase of development.

  1. 1. Create a participant responsibility collaboration card for each participant identified on the sequence or activity diagrams. (MS Word Template).

  2. 2. Add a brief description of the participant (if the name is not descriptive enough).

  3. 3. Reviewing each sequence or activity diagram, transfer the behaviors onto the RC card for each participant. Participant behaviors on sequence diagrams can be derived from the arrows that come into a participant. Collaborations are derived from arrows that go out of the participant in response to the arrows coming (but not return arrows!)

  4. 4. Reviewing activity diagrams, extract the activities for a participant from their partition and capture them on the RC card. Collaborations are derived from outflows from activities to other partitions.

  5. 5. Review each of the behaviors and infer the knowledge the participant must maintain to support the identified behaviors. Capture the behaviors (and collaborations if any).

  1. • Behaviors derived from sequence diagrams are typically named from the perspective of the client of the behavior, and not from the perspective of the participant providing the service. When deriving such a behavior, the “sense” of the name must be reversed to ensure readability.

  2. • Knowledge should include the number or range of things the participant “knows”.

  3. • Knowledge of a participant is limited to static knowledge, or things the participant knows even when the lights are off and everyone has gone home.

Participant Responsibility-Collaboration Cards (Example 1, Example 2, Example 3)